Best in class: Pato O'Ward targeting 2nd-place IndyCar championship finish as his toughest tracks near

Indianapolis Star

2 days ago

TORONTO — Pato O'Ward looks at this closing stretch of the IndyCar season a bit like a multi-class endurance sportscar race. Would an overall victory, in the form of hoisting the Astor Cup come the checkered flag at Nashville Superspeedway, be sweet?
Magical wouldn't even begin to describe it. But the Arrow McLaren veteran would be plenty happy to take a win in class — the "drivers not named Alex Palou" class, that is. Such is the life of a championship contender competing against a three-time series champ who's in the midst of one of the most dominant campaigns a unified American open-wheel series has seen in recent memory.
'What's the gap, 129 points? So, Palou's just got to (crash) this weekend and next, and I've got to win both of them, and I might still be 60 or 70 points back,' O'Ward told IndyStar ahead of the Honda Indy on the streets of Toronto, a track and an event that historically marks the Mexican's worst on the calendar. 'Weirder things have happened.'
Though O'Ward's math is a bit off: if he were to win both races (at least 51 points each) and Palou crashed out of both (let's give him a generous 20th place for both, or 10 points each), O'Ward would be staring at just under a 50-point gap with three races to go — the odds of such an occurrence almost makes it moot. For starters, Palou arrives in Toronto this week with an average finish of fourth place in three career starts at the venue.
O'Ward? An average finishing position of 12th, including a pair of finishes outside the top 10 — both on race weekends where he failed to advance out of the first round of qualifying. Last year's 17th-place result distorts this picture a bit. After all, O'Ward was running in sixth late in the race when he slid into the tires on the exit of Turn 1 and sparked a massive pile up that ended his day well outside the top 10. But it's not a stretch to say it's maybe the track where he feels least comfortable and one where he's least confident of producing a result in a pressure-packed situation that could in any way keep him realistically alive in the championship.
And it's why, he said, Arrow McLaren has thrown the proverbial kitchen sink at his car ahead of this weekend.
'We called Rolls-Royce to get some of that amazing suspension they've got on their cars,' O'Ward joked in referencing to racing around what may be the bumpiest street circuit on the calendar. 'We're coming with something completely new, at least on my car, because I feel like if we just arrive with what we've had (before), we're just accepting defeat at that point, so we're just going to be hoping to get better.
'We don't have to be fighting for pole, but just every little bit we can get would be helpful.'
O'Ward finished Friday afternoon's practice seventh fastest on the timing charts. Maybe even more important to keep an eye on heading in Saturday's practice and qualifying, though, is his gap to the fastest cars — one that sits at seven tenths after practice No. 1.
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'Qualifying at street courses has been the challenge this year, but I'm kinda glad we're at one to try and end the year on a good note and help turn it into a good race. We can have a great weekend here, but it's going to take an improvement in all-around pace,' O'Ward said. 'This is a track that I've been to (three times), and (that gap to the front) is always five-tenths, and I don't get closer.
'Even as the track progresses, I keep progressing, but that (gap) stays the same (to the leaders). It's been such a difficulty and such a challenging place, just even to catch a whiff of the Fast 12. You know I'll be giggling if I'm in the Fast Six. That would mean we've found something.'
O'Ward's unlikely road to putting some serious pressure on Palou won't come easy even after heading back to the States, with two more permanent road courses up next, which the young Mexican driver has never scored even a podium in eight combined starts at Laguna Seca and Portland. Palou, on the other hand, has eight podiums in 11 combined starts at the next three tracks, including four wins and just a single result worse than sixth place.
And that's why O'Ward's hopes are realistic with just over a month to go in his 2026 campaign. Still, there's personal history to target, he pointed out.
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'I've never been second in the championship. I've always been fighting for it, but at the end of the year, there's always been things that get us out of the running, so it would be great to get that off the list,' he said, pointing to a third place championship finish (2021), a pair of fourth place runs (2020 and 2023), a fifth place finish (2024) and seventh (2022).
'So I've basically crossed all of them off except for (first or second), and second is the first step. I would've loved to be first, and we still don't know what it's going to be, but we're going to strive to keep building on this.'